Retro Gamer #147 Comes to America!

Every month, we give you a spoiler-free run-down of what’s in the current (for the United States) issue of Retro Gamer magazine, letting you decide whether or not it’s worth buying.

OK, it actually hit last week but I was sick so I couldn’t go pick it up. What have they got cooking this issue?

Cover Story: “30 Greatest Super Mario Moments”. They basically just get memorable tidbits from all of the Super Mario games, and then have well-known game developers (John Romero, David Crane, etc.) supply anecdotes about them. Not bad, but not something that would get me to buy this issue if I didn’t obsessively collect them all. And its 21 pages long.

The first “The Making of…” column this month features the lesser-known SNES Super FX game “Vortex”. This is the kind of stuff that I read this magazine for. I didn’t know a thing about this game!

“Ultimate Guide: Mortal Kombat II” is a great feature, as well. MK II is widely considered to be the best game in the series.

“The Making of Friday the 13th” covers the home computer versions, but has a small blurb about the NES port. And tomorrow is Friday the 13th!

Oh, shit! “Horror Special: Splatterhouse”! How is this not the cover story considering that this was the October issue in the UK?!? 8 pages covering the entire series.

“The Making of Tomb Raider” of course covers the original PSX release. I never got into this game back in the day, and the fact that it hasn’t aged well makes it hard to go back to now, but it’s still cool to read about.

In the Mailbag section, someone writes in to complain about their top 25 PC Engine games list. Unfortunately, they’re only complaining about the magazines use of certain games’ western titles instead of the Japanese titles, when they should be complaining about the poor game selections.

Next month’s features will include a SNES retrospective and coverage of the port of Gunstar Heroes to the 3DS. Should be a good issue, then!